Amazon's Kindle wasn't selling that well, so...

[Werewolf]

I have thouands of books in my home. It's a pain in the butt sometimes. But, I'll never be without them.

When I read something for pleasure, I want the tactile feel of paper between my fingers, and the smell of paper, from cheap pulp acid stock books to fine linen-based archival quality, books in my nose...

I've tried reading books on my computer, and within 10 minutes I'm going out of my mind, hating what I'm doing. It's not pleasure at that point, it's work.

^^^
What HE said...

[MillCreek]

I'd be tempted to buy the Sony version (as it accepts PDF, RTF, TXT, etc.) IF books were sold in DRM-free formats.

Let me buy a txt file.  The device can deal with formatting, and thus compensate for the text size and page layout I choose.

Till I can buy txt files - no way I'm getting an e-book reader.

+ a lot to this sentiment.  Something that handles a variety of formats would be spot on.  I would love something like this for air travel. 

[Iain]

Heck, the Acer jobbies go for $350 'round here, $10 less than the Kindle.

And aside from my hard drive failure I can recommend it fairly strongly. Then again, I've dropped another chunk of money on the thing to get a 9 cell battery.

Balog is right though, reading .pdf's on any screen gets pretty tiring after a while.

[Balog]

+ a lot to this sentiment.  Something that handles a variety of formats would be spot on.  I would love something like this for air travel. 

1. I totally agree with this.

2. Congrats on your 1000th post MillCreek.  

[zahc]

That's very lossy, though. If you've got a good system, you'd definitely notice loss of quality

Have you ever actually tried it? I know it gives the audiophiles fits to think about it, but using any decent soundcard at all, the quality loss is imperceptible. Recall that the best-sounding albums ever were made in the seventies when the recording was effectively re-recorded to lossy analog media probably dozens of times between the mic and the vinyl cutting head. I DO have a nice system, and I record vinyl using my plain-vanilla soundcard all the time, and the results sound perfect, even on headphones.

[Balog]

Debating starting a new thread on this, but wth is the difference between a netbook, ultra-mobile pc, and a small laptop? If I just want something small and easily portable to browse the internet on (via wifi) or read .txt and .pdf files while on the bus or generally out and about, which would I need?

[Iain]

I'm not really sure what the difference is either, seems that no-one has a good definition.

I've had a couple of devices that could fit largely into your criteria (wifi and pdf) - the Acer Aspire One and the Archos 605. I'd choose the netbook every time, it might be considerably bigger, but folded up and put in my manbag (oh the shame, but it is so useful) it is no more noticeable than a decent sized hardback book. Now I've got a proper OS on it (Xubuntu, but XP would count too) it is a very useful too.

Now - off to Starbucks to pretend to write a novel.

[Gewehr98]

Zahc,

You are indeed correct.

Some of the best-sounding music comes from a vinyl pressing tracked via a diamond stylus, then amplified with electrons shed by glowing filaments zipping through plates and grids.

Hardly DDD in the transition from performer to listener, but as Bogie and I can attest to, it's pure heaven!   

It's why this workstation has a tube amp attached to the sound card, too. 

Well, that, and the big floor-standing speakers on either side...

[Bigjake]

I can see the utility of this. It's a lot easier to carry one lil device than 5 books. And yes, I'm the sort of person who takes 5 books every time I fly out of town. Being able to take along a few thousand books, so I can pick and choose based on my mood..... that'd be awesome.

I've considered getting a small netbook kinda lappie: I see them from Tiger Direct and the other wholesalers for a couple hundred bucks all the time. But it's a pain in the ass trying to read long pdf's or text files on a lappie.

I couldn't agree with ya more.

Long trip/deployment?  I like the thought of a few 1000 books available in a Kindle sized thinger.

The two sticking points I see are the format snafus, and battery life.


For the money, I'd rather have one of those eincy weency ASUS critters, and a pile of PDF books on the drive.

[seeker_two]

The Kindle looks like an interesting device (kinda like the PADD from STAR TREK), but I think it would sell better if it could support more apps than just the books.....like .pdf, .doc, & .txt files, maybe MP3 or MP4 files (listen while you read), and perhaps touchscreen typing for note-taking or other reminders). Maybe even store photos for use as a digital pic frame/screensaver when not used as a reader.

One-trick ponies don't sell anymore....you have to multi-task to survive....  

[MillCreek]

I just thought of another reason why these electronic book readers may be a good idea.  I assume that you can increase the size of the display typeface.  That would mean I could read without having to use a pair of reading glasses.  I will hit the half-century mark next year, and I am already starting to use reading glasses more and more.

[Marnoot]

I just thought of another reason why these electronic book readers may be a good idea.  I assume that you can increase the size of the display typeface.  That would mean I could read without having to use a pair of reading glasses.  I will hit the half-century mark next year, and I am already starting to use reading glasses more and more.

Another pro for the e-books over a net/note-book is the display. LCD screens flicker and can cause eye-strain and headaches after awhile. The e-book screens only update/refresh when a new page is loaded, so there is no flickering. That and the reading is more like from a paper as the screen is reflective (like paper) rather than transmissive, like a computer monitor.

[Balog]

Iain: is this the sort of thing you had?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220369

[buzz_knox]

The Kindle looks like an interesting device (kinda like the PADD from STAR TREK), but I think it would sell better if it could support more apps than just the books.....like .pdf, .doc, & .txt files, maybe MP3 or MP4 files (listen while you read), and perhaps touchscreen typing for note-taking or other reminders). Maybe even store photos for use as a digital pic frame/screensaver when not used as a reader.

One-trick ponies don't sell anymore....you have to multi-task to survive....  

I could be wrong, but I believe the Kindle does quite a bit of this.

[buzz_knox]

Of course - it doesn't...

Except that I'm a cheap SOB and can't imagine myself buying the same book twice.

Me too.  That's why I rarely dowloand something I already own.  The classics (Monster Hunter International) will be bought in both formats but the other duplicates come from free sources.  Since Amazon bought Mobipocket, there is quite a bit of free material out there.

[Regolith]

Bring down the price to $100-150 and lose the current DRM model, and I'd buy one.  I don't mind reading on a screen, and these screens are supposed to have such a high contrast ratio that it's almost as good as reading a printed page. 

Personally, I'd like to be able to download the ebook to my computer, then upload them to the Kindle so I could keep backups.  Also, $9.99 for an ebook is a bit ridiculous, particularly when you can usually buy the actual book for less.

[Iain]

Iain: is this the sort of thing you had?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220369

That sort of thing. There are several models out from different manufacturers. Massive numbers of Asus Eee models, more than I've kept track of. Dell have a Mini 9 and now a Mini 10 (screen size, resolution is the same though). Acer have the original Aspire One, and now 10" model. Samsung have one, Lenovo have one. The MSI models are apparently nice. A friend has the 10" Eee, which is ok, but I do prefer the keyboard on my Acer. Nicest keyboards are apparently to be found on the HP models.

Inside though they are all basically the same machine. Most have the 1.6ghz intel atom chip, integrated intel video and between 512mb and 2gb of ram. Hard drives vary.

I'm not sure that there is an advantage to the SSD (solid state drive) models really. I did consider getting one, and maybe oneday I'll replace the conv hdd in this laptop with a decent fast SSD just to have a computer with no moving parts. The SSD's in the cheap netbooks are not particularly good though. My 120gb model cost just £20 more than the 4gb SSD model, so I didn't think twice about it.

[Nitrogen]

I have thouands of books in my home. It's a pain in the butt sometimes. But, I'll never be without them.

When I read something for pleasure, I want the tactile feel of paper between my fingers, and the smell of paper, from cheap pulp acid stock books to fine linen-based archival quality, books in my nose...

I've tried reading books on my computer, and within 10 minutes I'm going out of my mind, hating what I'm doing. It's not pleasure at that point, it's work.

I hate you.  I donated about 400 books when I left California.  I just could not afford to take them all.
itd be nice if you could get a "electronic" version of a book when you buy the print version; because I'd read the print version, then swap or donate it, and like to keep the electronic version.  I'm sure that's "wrong" or "stealing" to some, but it'd be great for those of us with limited space.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I own an extensive library of hardbound books I've been adding to for almost 40 years.

Can I do that with a Kindle?  :rolleyes:

'Nuff Said...

If the Kindle had been designed right you'd be able to do that.  But thanks to the DRM they had to impose on everything...

[Manedwolf]

Bring down the price to $100-150 and lose the current DRM model, and I'd buy one.  I don't mind reading on a screen, and these screens are supposed to have such a high contrast ratio that it's almost as good as reading a printed page. 

The Sony I looked at was not. There was a flash during the "page turn" that would give me a headache.

[lee n. field]

How about something that costs maybe $50, that I can dump pdfs to for on the go reading?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

How about something that costs maybe $50, that I can dump pdfs to for on the go reading?

That would be ideal.

[Regolith]

The Sony I looked at was not. There was a flash during the "page turn" that would give me a headache.

Yeah, but Sony is the HK of the electronics world.

[Manedwolf]

I could be wrong, but I believe the Kindle does quite a bit of this.

For a fee. It's a nickel and dime device, based on the specs I'd seen. Their EV-DO only, not 802.11.

Subscribing to a newspaper is $14 a month per paper. The same content that is free online or on an iPhone or smartphone.

Subscribing to a BLOG is $1 a month PER BLOG. The same blogs that are free online or on an iPhone or smartphone.

I just don't get the appeal. It's the sort of nickel and diming that usually implies a loss leader device, but instead, it's a premium priced device plus the nickel and diming, and absolutely locked-up DRM.

[buzz_knox]

Just to be clear, the DRM applies only to Amazon items (as do the fees), not anything else.  The majority of items on my Kindle (which has a full internal memory and a 2GB SD card that is rapidly filling) are not DMR protected and were free.